September 28th

Hi! Relief Society conference was so good! wasn't it? I loved hearing Pres. Monson and the general presidency, it was fabulous. I wasn't fully with it that night (it broadcasts here at 9pm) because 1.) I was so tired and 2.) my stomach was hurting and I wasn't feeling top nautch but it was still really wonderful. We got to go to the temple today! yay! Sister Reyes an awesome member (single Mom of 5!) gave us a ride and it was so great. I love going to the temple and saying, "ok all of my outside cares you are staying out here, and I am going in there to feel peace." Afterwards she even drove us to the mission home where I had mail! Which is always exciting (Ash I got your letter thank you!) and Sis. Peaden got a birthday package, her birthdays on the 14th of October.
Sooo I just love the members here. It was like the first couple of weeks all you see is the outside appearance of these people and as you go into their homes and serve them and they serve you, it's just amazing. Forinstance, on Saturday this awesome member, Sister Henwood took us out to lunch as this great Italian restaurant, seriously a treat, I felt like a normal person for an hour. :) and then she came with us to a lesson. The lesson was awesome. It was with this 24 year old girl who hadn't prayed in forever, and was scared away as a child from religion because of bible camp where they told her everything is a sin. awesome. so anyways we taught her how to pray and she prayed and it was such a heartfelt prayer and it was awesome. So fast forward to Sunday, it's fast and testimony meeting and I go up and bear my testimony, of course I balled through the whole thing, blubberd really. I bore my testimony of the Atonement, because lately I feel like no matter how hard I try, I keep making mistakes, and I keep demanding perfection out of myself, yet I can NEVER get there, and I was realizing that I need to be relying on the Atonement. So anyways, sob fest right..so I sit down and 2 testimonies latter Sis. Henwood gets up there and gets teary eyed talking about the lesson she had gone with us to yesterday and she says straight to me, "sister crane, I don't know what your dealing with in your life, but if only you could have read the letter I was writing to my son about you yesterday (her sons on a mission in Texas) and telling him what a great missionary you are. You are a great missionary." Woah, so then I'm balling more. (Man this is making me sound really unstable, I promise it's nothing out of the ordinary, you just don't usually hear someone say such a compliment so clearly to you, or well in front of the whole branch.) So anyways I was really touched, and the members have just shown us a lot of love. Every day that I see a member on the street or around town I just feel so uplifted like, "ok ya I'm not alone in this!"
We had a really cool appointment yesterday. Her name is Cheryl and she actually called US. woah. She is dating this guy who is a referral from a member ( if that makes sense) She said she was really depressed and needs someone to talk to. We get there and she is balling from the start (worse than me right? :) ) So she starts talking about how are daughters have messed up lives, she is low on money, might loose her house, she is lonely, sad, and wanted to kill herself last week. Sis. Peaden and I are sitting there hearing her whole story, like holy cow. So she's telling us all this stuff, and I said, "so what are you expecting from us coming and seeing you?" she said she needs council, immediately sis. Peaden says, "well as missionaries we do not give council but what we can do is share our message and it will help you." we then gave a lesson on the Atonement. It was really good, she prayed at the end, is coming to General Conference this weekend and hugged us before we left. And you know what? when we left she had a smile on her face! She said, "I'm starting to feel better already!" It was amazing! She had this HUGE list of problems and concerns and you know what the answer to all of them is? the Atonement. I know it can and will change her life. I am now more than ever grateful for my family, for the opportunities I have had in my life, for being blessed with the gospel, for having a good family. And I honestly believe that everything I have been given and taught my whole life has been so that I can now help others. So that I could meet Cheryl and bear witness of a Savior and the healing power that that can bless her life. The gospel is true! Count your blessings everyday. That's advice that Mom has always given me and it has helped me so much here. Jesus Christ lives! and because he lives we can live to! and our burdens can be made light! I am so grateful for the opportunity to share that message with the people here. Can't wait for general conference. It's kind of cool to think we will all be doing the same thing and watching and hearing the same message at the same time. :) I love you all! Thank you for your letters and prayers.

love,
Sister Crane

September 22

Hi everyone,
So some awesome experiences this week! We had all of those appointments, over half fell through but we still taught a TON it was such a blessing and it's continuing on through out this next week. Some investigators have dropped us, but as they do, new ones keep coming! It's amazing! Last week this single mom Karen with her 8 year old daughter Brittany that we are teaching, prayed together! Karen had only prayed one other time and we asked her to pray and she was hesitant so I asked Brittany to pray and Brittany said, "uh I don't know how" and Karen jumped in and said, "I'll help you" and then she walked her through how to pray just like we had walked Karen through how to pray. It was the most amazing experience ever and I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. To see a Mom teach her daughter to pray to her Heavenly Father, because we had knocked on her door and taught her how to pray to her Heavenly Father, wow. It was an experience of a life time.

In other news, we are still teaching Casey a single mom of 2 who knows the church is true but she doesn't think she's ready to be baptized yet. We tried to set a date with her, but she said she's not ready and she says that she will pray about the date we gave her of Oct. 23rd. Man oh man. We taught her about the word of wisdom and my personal fav. Law of chastity. haha ya first time teaching that one and boy oh boy is that a humbling one. It was fine, and I am amazed at how bold I am when wearing this name bag, but it's hard because I can't relate to her I just know why we should obey it! I told her about each of my siblings and that if anyone of them were here I knew they would tell her that they were so grateful that they waited and were obedient to that law. It's amazing how I just love Casey so much. I really want her to be baptized and I kept reminding her that it's not about letting us as missionaries down, it's between her and the Lord and she wants to be baptized and is missing out on the blessings that the Lord so freely wants to give her!

The work is great. We are so excited today for P-day we are going to the church getting popcorn and watching old church videos like Labor of Love and The Prodigal Son and seminary videos. We've counted down to it all week. It's hillarious that as a missionary you get so excited about something so ridiculous but it gets me through. And now we get to look forward to going to the temple next Wednesday! ah! Sister Peaden hasn't been for 7 months! crazy huh! but we got permission from the Pres. and a Sister in the branch, Sister Reyes, who is awesome by the way, is going to drive us so we can do a session with sister Hudson! So I get to see my long lost friend again! If in your prayers you could pray that we get to go to the temple that would be wonderful! We are looking forward to it so much, and I'm slightly nervous that something will happen so we can't go. So we have been praying for it every day :) Can't wait!

I love you all thank you so much for your letters and e-mails and prayers! I feel so blessed with support and it helps motivate me so much! thank you thank you!

September 15th

Hello!
So wow this week has been kind of crazy. We have 22 appointments just for this week alone! I don't know if you realize how insane that is! 22! That only happens in places like Mexico and the Phillipines not in Truro Nova Scotia Canada! And if half of them fall through (which unfortunatly that happens sometimes) we would have 11 lessons! Do you know how many we had 2 weeks ago? uhh...like 5 maybe and then if half fell through it was devastating. but 22! 22?! Sister Peaden and I are in shock seriously. So is our district leader. We have more investigators than any missionaries in our District I think. It's crazy. And I really am not trying to boast because I KNOW that it's only through the Lord that this is done. We went and visiting people for a little over an hour yesterday that we've been trying to get a hold of FOREVER it felt like and guess what? We made 5 appointments to return and teach in that time! We were in shock. A LOT of prayers of gratitude were said this week. The Lord is so incredibly merciful.
Sunday was a really hard day. We had made a poster and flyers for our activity and last week 8 appointments fell through which was such a bummer because we had been so excited to implement what we had been taught in leadership training. So at church we are juggling a million things. For one our investigator CAME TO CHURCH! Casey is her name the single Mom of 2 and we had not had ANY one come to church and she came! It was a miracle. So we're trying to help her, another member had her non-member sister there. We had planned to talk to like 8 members to ask to come with us to appointments, everyone we asked said no, and then the other ones we didnt' get a chance to talk to. So I'm freaking out inside feeling so stressed. Oh and 2 less active people who we have been teaching came to church! Which was amazing! The only thing is one of them has a son who was screaming at church! seriously loudest kid I've ever heard and I know how stressful it is to keep kids quiet at church, but the thing is the kid is being so loud and is sitting right next to Casey so I'm praying the whole time that she will hear the speakers and be able to focus and I'm stressing out inside. And to top it all off one of the members came up to me and said something at which I took offense. I won't rehash it because I'm moving on, but lets just say that after the stress of the week and of church alone I came home frustrated and angry. I don't get angry often. And for some reason the mission brings out strong emotions in me it seems. And I was mad. But I knew that we were leaving to go knock and so I knew I needed the Spirit with me or I couldn't teach. Lets just say I prayed a lot. and a lot. And we left and went to work and BAM we get a hold of a girl that we have been trying to get a hold of and we go to her house and teach her! And she even said the closing prayer! It was such a great lesson it was awesome!

....so moral of the story is, when we turn to the Lord we are blessed. The Lord will help us. I feel like I'm learning a lot about facing my problems. I used to love to avoid things, and at home if I had been feeling like I was feeling normally I would just watch TV or sleep it off or something, but here you can't do that. You have to turn to the Lord immediately or you don't have the Spirit with you and you can't teach. It's as simple as that. And it's teaching me a lot!

So anyways i've been learning a lot and we've had a lot of lessons! 4 so far this week and 3 tonight. I'm so excited. I need to work on my patience for sure, because lessons aren't cookie cutter recipes, they are each different, so I'm working on being patient with having the lesson not go exactly as I want it every time.

Good story though. So in Canada you go to the back door. Weird I know, and I feel intrusive everytime we do, but they hardly ever use their front doors. So we are going up this long drive way and it wraps around the back and I Sister Peaden and I are just chatting and all the sudden I see this face of a dog. Now that should be no surprise to me dogs are EVERYWHERE here. But then the dog stands up and well have any of you seen the dog on the movie "beetovhen"? Look it up. This dog was the BIGGEST dog I have ever seen. It could have been a horse. I thing i said something like "Holy SMACKAGE" or something that didn't make sense as I gasped and prepared to run as fast as I could down that hill. Luckily the owner popped out of no where and grabbed the dog. I was in such surprise that I could bearly tell the owner our message with out shaking. I laughed the whole rest of the walk down the street. It was crazy. That dog was a beast. So I guess moral from that story is the Lord protects his servants, big time.

Anyways the work is great. HARD, but great. And each day I still get up and pray to the Lord for help that I will make it through that day, not feel homesick and love the work. And each night as we come in from working I feel exhausted and I thank the Lord for helping me accomplish one more day and for finding joy in the work. The church is true! It really is! And it can change the lives of so many. I'm excited to see those changes. Thank you for your support and prayers. I love you all!

love,
Sister Crane

September 8th

I survived hurricaine Earl! and in fact the day the hurricaine hit I we got more knocking time in done than we did any other day! haha! It wasn't even as exciting as we were hoping for! the power didn't go out or anything! lame! they say 3 more will hit before the end of the year so I'm hoping for some sort of excitment. But I'm glad we were so safe, we had to stay in for part of the day because it was so stormy, and so we deep cleaned which, man oh man does that apartment need! gross. that's all I'll say about that, I think they called sisters into this area mostly for the apartments sake :) So anyways as soon as the rain let up I said, "Sister Peaden lets go!" We both didn't want to, but it was actually a really successful day! Everyone saw how dedicated we were and admired us for it. We got a lot of appointments set up and it was great!

So we're planning this missionary activity for the ward members and I'm so excited about it! Next Saturday we are going to have an activity called "Sweet is the Work" and everyone will bring desserts and we are going to give each member a mission call that says, "you have been called to the Truro Branch" and then give them goals they can accomplish as a missionary for the next month and then President and Sister Simpson are going to come out and do a fireside in a month for them! The coolest part is that it was all our idea and it's actually coming together. And I think the branch we'll seriously feel like it's a celebrity coming out, having the mission pres. come and speak. So hopefully it will get them pumped up to give us referrals. Note to all: give the missionaries referrals, just one, it helps so much! Ok i'm off my soap box, just an idea though :)

Well the real exciting news is that it's leadership training this week! So Tues. through Thurs. we drive up and back to Halifax each day (an hour away) and the mission pres. trains us. About half of the missionaries are there these 3 days 40 of us in total. I have learned so much and to be honest I feel so inadequite. He has just been firing at us with information and on ways to improve and we've been role playing a lot, where we'll pretend to be teaching real investigators to other missionaries. And it is so helpful but man oh man, I just can't help but feel like I have a long way to go! We tried last night to go and apply some of the principles he taught like, "teaching people, instead of teaching lessons" so we went into this lesson with a woman named Karen. She is a single parent. Has a daughter who is 8 and we had taught her twice and actually met her by knocking into her the first week. So we wanted to know if she was really interested because she wasn't reading from the Book of Mormon, so we went in there thinking oh we just need to teach her as a person and forget about the lesson. and so we went from one extreme to the other. From teaching lessons, to teaching her. And guess what. The Spirit wasn't there. We thought about it a lot, and I was really frustrated trying to think what I had done wrong and then Sister Peaden said, "we didn't prepare a lesson!" We went in there unprepared, so of course the Spirit couldn't teach through us! duh! So it's a learning experience. And I am learning slowly, but surely. And I'll get there, I just have such a long way to go.

Life is good. The work is good. I feel like I'm accepting this life style, you know instead of fighting it or wishing I was some where else, I'm here! So I'm trying to just be HERE. It's hard sometimes, but through prayer I'm getting there. One thing I'm really learning this week is how HUGE the Book of Mormon is in our religion. It truly is the keystone of our religion. If we have have a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true, then we will know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that God lives and loves us! Seems easy to us, but it's huge! And trying to teach this to investigators is harder than it seems, but I know if they'll read it they'll know it! And I'm so grateful for prayer. I take for granted the knowledge of prayer, and some people we teach don't even know God will listen to them. It's so amazing to know that we can pray and that God is listening to us! He is I just know it. I know the Book of Mormon is true and that we can gain and regain our testimony of it every day if we will just read it! really study it. The gospel is true! I really think that Truro is a baptizing area I just know it! There are people here that need us and that have been prepared by the Lord to hear the gospel from Sister Peaden and I. I feel it. Yesterday we stopped by a girls house, Casey, she is cohabitating, has 2 kids and works 4 jobs and does school! yikes I know, and she has met with the missionaries a ton, but for the past 4 weeks I've been here we haven't been able to contact her at all! We prayed for her every single day since we've been here and called her and stopped by I can't even count how many times, but then yesterday we felt good about stopping by just one more time. And BAM she was there! she's coming to church on Sunday and we're teaching her next week and as I left I jumped up and down and wanted to dance through the streets. It was the happiest moment of my mission so far. And I think what made it so amazing was knowing that we had been patient and worked so hard and then after the trial of our faith, God allowed us to know when she was home and we got to talk to her! What a huge blessing! I'm just so happy and can't wait to talk to her more!

Well I love you all, you are in my prayers and I think of you often. I know you will be blessed by me being here, and that I will be too, and I know that the Lord loves each of His children so much. And if we pray and read the scriptures we will know that they are true. Until next week!

Sister Crane

Sister Anne on Prince Edward Island

Hi! So this week has been really good, not a ton of success, but the highlight was sisters conference! Monday night all of the sisters traveled to the mission home and we spent the night there with all 12 sisters, had a delicious meal and talked with President and Sister Simpson. It was so great. At one point President Simpson as he was talking to everyone he was addressing how we shouldn't get discouraged so easily and he looked at me and goes, "ok sister crane?" and I nodded and then he moved on. It wasn't that big of a deal, but I can't believe he said it to me directly, somehow he knew. The next day we spent all day at Prince Edward Island! Ah! It was MARVELOUS! Seriously, it was like a vacation day, no not like one, it was one!
So first we went to Anne of Green Gables! And Sister Simpson kept saying how much I look like her haha. And we walked through Anne's house and walked on lovers lane and the haunted woods. It was so fun! We just took fun pictures and ran around on the green fields and then went to the gift shop! Which I went crazy at because well it's Anne of Green Gables come on! I got an I *heart* Gilbert shirt haha and then got Mom a little something :) Maybe I'll send it to you for Christmas we'll see. And I got a cute little picture that has Anne and Dianna on it that says "kindred spirits" it was seriously so much fun best part of the day! Then we had a picnic lunch and headed off to the beach!
Ok so you know the part in Anne of Avonle where she is writing poetry and then her papers blow away and she runs into that older guy who proposes to her later and all that. Ok well if you can picture that tall green grass and the sand that she's on and the water, that is EXACTLY what I saw. I pretended like I was her running through the sandy cliffs and the tall green grass that was blowing in the wind. Sister Hudson seriously thought I was crazy because I wanted to re in-act everything from the movie. But I just had to. It was crazy how it looked so much like in the movie! I took some videos. Hopefully I can upload them to my next e-mail. Seriously it was so gorgeous!
Anyway then we went to Charlottetown and went shopping and President bought us all ice cream cones and I got rasberry cordial at the Anne's Chocolates store. (seriously people will sell anything here and tourists like me will buy it just because it says Anne of Green Gables on it) but don't worry I didn't get everything I saw just some cute things to remember it by! They also sold chocolate covered potato chips there...weird...but pretty good. Then we took the ferry back to the mainland and it was gorgeous! The sun was setting as we were going across the water and it was seriously the most beautiful sight with the light houses all over! Oh man I have to send you pictures! Then get this we GOT TO WATCH Anne of green gables! a real movie! ah! I wore my I heart Gilbert shirt and we watched it and it was glorious. Seriously the best day ever! Oh man, I bet all of you reading this are thinking how crazy I am but after working so hard and being here and knowing how hard I still have to work, to have a day like this was so amazing!
So then we woke up and had an amazing breakfast and went and played frisbee with some Elders and Sisters who are in Halifax. It was so fun and I was so sad to say goodbye to Sister Hudson! But what is exciting is next Tuesday-Thursday we get to go to a day long Leadership training in Halifax with the President next week and I'll get to see her then! I'm really excited because after a day like yesterday, it's hard to be excited about the work. What was nice though is that getting to know the Sisters I know I'm not alone. They are working just as hard as I am and they are all really great. I know that whatever companion I have next will be great, because I have gotten to know them all.
Anyways enough of my fairytale day. And back to work! I really hope that I just immerse myself in the work this week and that I don't feel to sad after such an amazing adventure. It's hard to get back into the groove of things, but I know if I work hard it will be easier. Thank you for your prayers and your letters! I loving hearing about how everyone is doing!

Love,
Sister Crane

Ashley on Prince Edward Island